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  The hand-writing of your letter is so miserable, that I am not sure I have made it out. If I have it seems to me you are the same old sixpence you used to be, rather rusty, but a genuine piece.

  I see nothing for you in this earth but that field which I once christened “Briars”; go out upon that, build yourself a hut, & there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive. I see no alternative, no other hope for you. Eat yourself up, you will eat nobody else, nor anything else.

  Concord is just as good a place as any other; there are indeed, more people in the streets of that village, than in the streets of this. This is a singularly muddy town; muddy, solitary, & silent.

  They tell us, it is March; it has been all March in this place, since I came. It is much warmer now, than it was last November, foggy, rainy, stupefactive weather indeed.

  In your line, I have not done a great deal since I arrived here; I do not mean the Pencil line, but the Staten Island line, having been there once, to walk on a beach by the Telegraph, but did not visit the scene of your dominical duties, Staten Island is very distant from No. 30 Ann St.

  I saw polite William Emerson in November last, but have not caught any glimpse of him since then. I am as usual offering the various alternations from agony to despair, from hope to fear, from pain to pleasure. Such wretched one-sided productions as you, know nothing of the universal man; you may think yourself well off.

  That baker,—[Isaac Thomas] Hecker, who used to live on two crackers a day I have not seen, nor [Rebecca Gray?] Black, nor Vathek [John Wilhelm Vethake], nor Danedaz nor [Isaiah] Rynders, or any of Emerson’s old cronies, excepting James [Henry James, Sr.], a little fat, rosy Swedenborgian amateur, with the look of a broker, & the brains & heart of a Pascal.-Wm [William Henry] Channing I see nothing of him; he is the dupe of good feelings, & I have all-too many of these now.

  I have seen something of your friends, [Giles] Waldo, and [William] Tappan, I have also seen our good man “McKean,” the keeper of that stupid place the “Mercantile Library.” I have been able to find there no book which I should like to read.

  Respecting the country about this city, there is a walk at Brooklyn rather pleasing, to ascend upon the high ground & look at the distant ocean. This is a very agreeable sight. I have been four miles up the island in addition, where I saw, the bay; it looked very well, and appeared to be in good spirits.

  I should be pleased to hear from Kamkatscha [i.e. Concord, Mass.] occasionally; my last advices from the Polar Bear [i.e. Ralph Waldo Emerson] are getting stale. In additions to this, I find that my corresponding members at Van Dieman’s land, [i.e. Fruitlands] have wandered into limbo. I acknowledge that I have not lately corresponded very much with that section.

  I hear occasionally from the World; everything seems to be promising in that quarter, business is flourishing, & the people are in good spirits. I feel convinced that the Earth has less claims to our regard, then formerly, these mild winters deserve a severe censure. But I am well aware that the Earth will talk about the necessity of routine, taxes, &c. On the whole, it is best not to complain without necessity.

  Mumbo Jumbo [Horace Greeley] is recovering from his attack of sore eyes, & will soon be out, in a pair of canvas trousers, scarlet jacket, & cocked hat. I understand he intends to demolish all the remaining species of Terichism at a meal; I think it’s probable it will vomit him. I am sorry to say, that Roly-Poly has received intelligence of the death of his only daughter, Maria; this will be a terrible wound to his paternal heart.

  I saw Teufelsdrock a few days since; he is wretchedly poor, has an attack of the colic, & expects to get better immediately. He said a few words to me, about you. Says he, that fellow Thoreau might be something, if he would only take a journey through the “Everlasting No”, thence for the North Pole. By God”, said the old clothes-bag “warming up”, I should like to take that fellow out into the Everlasting No, & explode him like a bomb-shell; he would make a loud report. He needs the Blumine flower business; that would be his salvation. He is too dry, too confused, too chalky, too concrete. I want to get him into my fingers. It would be fun to see him pick himself up.” I “camped” the old fellow in a majestic style.

  Does that execrable compound of sawdust & stagnation, Alcott still prose about nothing, & that nutmeg-grater of a [Edmund] Hosmer yet shriek about nothing,—does anybody still think of coming to Concord to live, I mean new people? If they do, let them beware of you philosophers.

Ever yrs my dear Thoreau,
W E C

  P. M.—To Upper Nut Meadow . . . As I go along the snow under Clamshell Hill hear it [the river] sing around me, being melted next the ground . . .

  Dear Henry,

  I am off again to New York in the morning, & go leaving my Professor Horsford [Eben M. Horsford] once more to your tender mercies. He is to come surely Wednesday Evening, & I ventured to promise him your kind conduct to the Hall. So you must come to tea, & hear the Chemistry.

  Ever your bounden [burden?]

  R. W. E.

  I have been out of town, else I should have acknowledged your letters before. Though not in the best mood for writing I will say what I can now. You plainly have a rare, though a cheap, resource in your shanty. Perhaps the time will come when every country-seat will have one—when every country-seat will be one. I would advice you to see the shanty business out, though you go shanty mad. Work your vein till it is exhausted, or conducts you to a broader one; so that C[hanning] shall stand before your shanty, & say “that is your house.”

  This has indeed been a grand winter for me & for all of us. I am not considering how much I have enjoyed it. What matters is how happy or unhappy we have been, if we have minded our business and advanced our affairs I have made it a part of my business to wade in the snow & take the measure of the ice. The ice on on of out pond was just two feet thick on the first of March—and I have to-day been surveying a wood—lot where I sank about two feet at every step.

  It is high time that you, fanned by the warm breeze of the Gulf Stream, had begun to “lay”—for even the Concord hens have—though one wonders where they find the raw material of egg-shells here. Beware how you put off your laying to any later spring, else your cackling will not have the inspired early spring sound. I was surprised to hear the other day that Channing was in New Bedford. When he was here last (in Dec., I think) he said, like himself, in answer to my inquiry where he lived, that he did not know the same of the place; so it has remained in a degree of obscurity to me. As you have made it certain to me that he is in New Bedford, perhaps I can return the favor by putting you on the track to his boarding house there. Mrs Anold told Mrs Emerson where it was—and the latter thinks, though she may be mistaken, that it was at a Mrs Lindsey’s

  I am rejoiced to hear that you are getting on so bravely with him & his verses. He and I, as you know, have been old cronies.

“Feed the same flock, by fountain, shade, & rill.
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,
We drove afield, and both together heard &c &c &c”

“Bout O the heavy change” now he is gone!

  The C you have seen & described is the real Simon Pure. You have seen him. Many a good ramble may you have together. You will see in him still more of the same kind—to attract & to puzzle you. How to serve him most effectually has long been a problem with his friend. Perhaps it is left for you to solve it. I suspect that the most that you or any one can do for him is to appreciate his genius—to buy & read, & cause others to buy & read his poems. That is the land which he has put forth to the world —Take hold of that. Review them if you can. Perhaps take the risk of publishing something more which he may write.

  Your knowledge of Cowper will help you to know C. He will accept sympathy & aid, but he will not bear questioning—unless the aspects of the sky are particularly auspicious. He will even be “reserve & enigmatic,” & you must deal with him at arm’s length.

  I have no secrets to tell you concerning him, and do not wish to call obvious excellence & defects by far-fetched names. I think I have already spoken to you more, and more to the purpose, on this theme, than I am likely to write now—nor need I suggest how witty & poetic he is—and what an inexhaustible fund of good-fellowship you will find in him.

  As for visiting you in April,—though I am inclined enough to take some more rambles in your neighborhood, especially by the sea-side, I dare not engage myself, nor allow you to expect me. The truth is, I have my enterprises not as ever, at which I tug with ridiculous feebleness, but admirable perseverance—and cannot say when I shall be sufficiently fancy-free for such an excursion.

  You have done well to write a lecture on Cowper. In the expectation of getting you to read it here, I applied to the curators of our Lyceum but alas or Lyceum has been a failure this winter for want of funds. It ceased some weeks since, we a debt—they tell me, to be carried over to the next years’ account. Only one more lecture is to be read by a Signor somebody—an Italian—paid for by private subscription—as a deed of charity to the lecturer. They are not rich enough to offer you your expenses even, though probably a month or two ago they would have been glad of the chance.

  However the old house has not failed yet. That offers you lodging for an indefinite time after you get into it—and in the mean while I offer you bed & board in my father’s house—always expecting hair pillows & new-fangled bedding.

  Remember me to your family

  Yrs
  H.D.T